


pharmaka, pharmaka

by orphan_account



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, baby asra, royal origin au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 10:38:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16217306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alchemy rules; balancing the world in a fair, evil circle. Turning yourself invisible makes people not notice you’re there, and keeping it up for days at a time makes people forget.__The worst part of forgetting what you were is when you feel your mind, your memories emptying. You were someone, once. You had parents, once. The magician called you something under the full moon, once.__Thing is, he's the reason you started running. Thing is, you've been running for so long you forgot anything else.





	pharmaka, pharmaka

**19.** You’ve been running around unseen for months now, and it’s finally gotten you at the short end of the stick. There’s only so much of something you can take before you start heaping yourself in debt, and it’s something  mama’s been teaching you since you could walk. Alchemy rules; balancing the world in a fair, evil circle. Turning yourself invisible makes people not notice you’re there, and keeping it up for days at a time makes people forget.  You started doing it because it’s easier to make something out of nothing when you turn into nothing from something, and making dreams when you’re wide awake is the most nothing of them all.  

There’s a lot of invisible things in the air with you, it seems. There’s the auras-the colorful fifth skins of the court nobles-and there’s the tiny water droplets and even smaller oxygen atoms ready to combust into fire. The whole room is ready to burn till there’s no place to breathe, but you don’t think the stranger realizes.   
  
“ _Well, by the fucking gods_ ,” The stranger laughs, and oh, it’s not a laugh you like. “T _he king’s cousins are witches!”_  
  
Make the air burn, you think, it’s waiting for you to do so. Truth is, the stranger is paler than anyone you’ve seen before, and he’s got black marks around his eyes that look like coal dust. If you make the room into fire, he’ll just turn into a sword, hot and melding and straight from the furnace.   
  
Mama stands in the corner, face twisting in angry, angry hate. There’s a tremble in the blue around her, and that’s how you know she’s scared. Baba holds her, and he’s scared too, quieter, accepting.  Mama only says one thing, and one thing only, while she stands shaking.   
  
“Run,” She screams, and you do. 

* * *

**17**. Baba’s hair gets into his-your eyes when he holds out the giant, golden book with the leaves sticking out unevenly. “It’s not a gift, Asra. Think of it as a rule-book.”   
  
You have to drop the paper and scissors in order to touch the book, the purple sheets scattering the crude circles you’ve been practicing. It was a little paper-weight you wanted to learn to make, so the wispy cloud-people you magic don’t disappear so fast. You’re getting better, and fast too, and the old professor had stared at you early morning in his unique jealousy/pity. Mama and Baba seemed to have noticed, which is why Baba is here with his (and only his, you got mama’s white curls instead of his pink) hair over his (yours, you didn’t get mama’s black eyes) eyes, looking tired and triumphant in that quiet way of his.   
  
You don’t look a lot like him. You have his eyes, and his nose, but all the rest is the movement. He walks like he could fit anywhere, and he’s fast too, and you hope that you’d be small, and as easy as him. Mama says that she can never find either of you two when you don’t want to be found. You get your magic from him too, but his magic is quieter. It’s soft, its like warm grass on a breezy day, it never prods and never does much bold things. He can disappear as well, but there’s always a sense of cut flowers in the gravity when he’s hidden.   
  
“A rule book? Is this for the lessons? I haven’t seen it in the library.” You ask, curiosity shining in you like a crest-stamped coin. It’s hard to see something you don’t know what is, and it’s harder yet to just touch instead of reading.  The cover is heavy, and brimming with the same silver-ness in magic that makes the gravity around magical objects grow just that bit heavier.   
  
Baba huffs with laughter. “Rule-book was a shitty way of putting it, sorry little guy. No, it’s not for lessons. Your mother and I wrote it. It’s about tarot.”   
  
You look at the book, take it from his hands, and flip it open, watching the cream pages turn with the newness of fresh-pressed silk. There’s riddles in there, in your mother’s handwriting and there’s paintings in your fathers ink-colors. Cards with hugging figures and doves and foxes and snakes and fish and swans.   
  
It makes you scared, the pictures. If your parents give you a big book with everything they’ve been trying to teach you and more in it, it means they’re expecting to hit a wall where they won’t be able to show you themselves.   
  
In the distance, you hear a pig’s dying scream and the color red flashes in your eyes, with thousand of wings hitting the inside of your eyelids.   
  
You hold the book tight. It’s heavier than you feel it should be. “Thank you,” You say, staring at the gilded pages. There’s a picture of a red dragon lying limp, the red of it’s scales seeping into the pages like a pool of blood. Ten swords stab into its wings, and it’s eyes glow white.   
  
I _t’s ending, it’s starting_. The pages say, in one of the riddles mama wrote. I _t’ll be beautiful, it will be ugly. Start the end, end the beginning. Don’t try to stop, for nothing stops when it starts._

* * *

**1**. You don’t talk. It doesn’t feel like you need to. You can just look at someone and they’ll understand.  _See me._  You say, and they hear. _Look into my heart and see what I have to say._

Most of the court nobles look away. Only mama, with her thousand of dress folds and one stray white curl escaping from her hijab and her black-ink eyes and her sharp smile can look you in your eyes and kiss your forehead. Baba doesn’t need to look at you to hear you. He calls it telepathy, and you believe him. Uncle Rashaad tries, wrinkles his bushy white eyebrows and scratches his bushy white beard and shakes his bushy white hair, mumbling something about old age.

  
There’s fear in the court, and it’s a tingling itch to know that the servants are scared of you. You can jump higher than any of their children, run faster, see better. You talk to the ghosts they can’t see. You make the boiling hot water ice-cold, and the nurse-maid flinches. They do not speak, because they are warned.‘ _Be careful, the king’s cousin’s child has magic. Don’t look into his eyes, there’s something off about them_.’ None of them speak to you. They can’t listen to your heartbeat, so you’re content with watching their auras.  
  
Mama never told you why you’re like this, and there’s a sneaking suspicion that it’s not just because of Baba.

Your name is Asra. Travel by night. At night, a giant fox with purple eyes stares at you at the corner of the room, smiling. It’s frightening. Whenever the fox comes, rabbits cry and you drown in sand under the moon. The next morning, you still have a dry throat, and you make the glass of water shatter with one thought.

* * *

**4.**  The fox stands on two paws instead of four, and it wears a red cloak over a white tunic. It’s purple eyes shine as bright as gunpowder. You’re awake this time. _See me,_ you say. _See me so I know there’s no reason to travel by night._  
  
The fox laughs, the first noise you hear from it. “Curious,” It replies. “Curious, curious, curious.”   
  
_Curious,_  you answer.

That makes the fox laugh harder, and suddenly, it sits on the edge of your giant bed. “Selene is foolish for picking a pharmaka, ah well.”It’s claws tap it’s wide mouth.

“Asra, would you like to play a game?”  A rabbit’s neck snaps in the distance, and underground your fingers grab hold to the roots which pour blue.

 _Curious,_  you answer. It’s the best yes you’ve got.

* * *

**2.**   The dining hall is buzzing with his uncle being surrounded by his hive of noble-men and women, with soldiers clad in metal and servants flying to and fro with butchered meats.   
  
You sit next to your mama, who sits next to your uncle, who is seated where the captain of the guard stands behind him, eyes as metallic as his armor. There’s a noblewoman dressed in orange who gives the captain and your uncle a sly smile. “Why, your majesty,” She starts, and her voice is high, like it’s stuck in her nose. You think about snakes in her hijab, instead of hair. There’s a goddess who’s got snakes instead of hair, and you can’t remember if the tutor said if she was the goddess of love or of shields. “I hope I do not cross lines I should not be crossing, but I believe I speak for everyone when I say that I am…concerned.”   
  
You uncle straightens, and raises a bushy eyebrow, pulling the pink cheek scar tight, and making his black eyes pierce cleaner. The captain behind him rests a stray hand to the sword tied to his hips. You think the snake-haired goddess was the goddess of shields.   
  
“Go on, Danice. What is it?” Uncle Rashaad booms, his loud kingly voice bouncing in every corner of every room. Baba raises his head quickly from the other side of the table, wild hair spiked in every which way and pink eyes watching, wary. A meerkat, scoping out the eagle.

Your mother stabs her potatoes hard, and says nothing.    
  
“Well, my lord. I hate to say it, but you are…past your prime. Who will be your heir?” The orange dressed snake woman asks, and mama stabs her potatoes harder.   
  
There is more metal in between everyone’s breaths then there are on the soldier’s chests, and Uncle Rashaad roars with laughter, throwing his head back.   
  
“Whoever wants the throne, they can have it! I have no heir, my girl, none at all!” He guffaws, kind eyes wrinkling and creating more lines on his face.   
  
“But, your majesty, that would be indecent! Surely, someone of your blood must step in line! Vesuvia would be in shambles if it is not so!” Danice squeaks, delicately. “Perhaps Lady Halla and her husband could-”   
  
“I have a family to raise, Danice.” Your mother spits, prim. “As well as my duties as Prakran ambassador, so I cannot accept the throne. My family is my priority, as much as it may pain you to believe so.”   
  
Everyone looks at Baba. He is still, silent.   
  
“And you, Jabir? What do you say about becoming my heir?” Uncle says, smiling.   
Baba looks at his plate, where his hands hover. “No, I don’t think so.” He mumbles. “I’m not from around these parts, you know that.” His eyes flicker around the room; grasshoppers.   
  
“That leaves one more of my blood, then.” Uncle says, and turns to you. Your blood sings. Everyone winces, and you can taste the edge of the metal in their sighs.   
  
_A field of flowers,_ You think.   _A field of flowers with me holding a star in a circle._ Your mama stares at you, trying to parse it out.   
  
“I think he’s up for whatever fate spreads out for him,” Baba says, smiling slightly. “Be it him becoming the new ruler, or not.”  

The flowers grow into reeds, and the star paints the sky red. That, you don’t mention. 

* * *

**13**. “There’s an island on the edge of the world, you know.” Your mother uses her story voice, and you listen, because her story voice sounds infinitely better than the dream ghosts. “Named Ghrni. It’s a place where if you know the way, the sun never sets for weeks on end. People in there are born, and they are born with two hearts instead of one.”   
  
“Where do they get the second heart from?” You ask, thinking about never-ending sun and two hearts.   
  
“They get it from the mountains. They can’t go there themselves, but the hearts are grown in caves and then, when a child is born, the sun digs up the heart and places it in their tiny chest. The second heart is to help them know where the sun goes, and how the land fares with it’s health. It’s a compass for them, in technical terms.”    
  
“Wow,” You answer, because you don’t think the sun takes to you kindly. It’s always the moon, Selene, who leads you to the beaches.    
  
“Did you know,” Mama continues, story voice low and thralling, “That I have three hearts instead of one, or even two?”   
  
You can believe it. Her mind whirls with things you think, she thinks, and baba thinks. She wove herself to baba, and she had woven you into existence. She loves you more than you can understand, than baba can understand for you.    
  
“I have just one.” You reply, a bit sad.   
  
“Yes, but, habibi. That one was made by baba and I. We took pieces from the stars and shaped them into you. It’s your heart, yours and yours alone. That’s very special, my love.”   
  
You press your hand to your chest and you try to hear your (and yours alone) heart thump.

* * *

**5**. The fox grins.  Your eyes see nothing but black, and the black slowly turns into the darkest shade of red you’ve ever seen.   
  
_Magician_ , The black seems to say, and it points to the fox.   
  
You make a fire with your bare hands, and there’s more color. The fox, the magician, howls with laughter.   

“Not that kind of game, not yet.” The fox wheezes, and the fire is gone, and there is nothing but black and the feeling of horse hair against his feet.  The lips of your mouth tingle with the word curious.

* * *

**18.**  Metal soldiers start to bang on doors, including the door where you and your parents are, where you read the book, looking at the picture of that red, dying dragon.   
  
You turn invisible out of habit. Usually, when people grow loud in the palace, it’s meant for only one or two pairs of ears, most of them deaf and important and adult. The book is invisible with you, and the dragon’s white eyes do not exist any more.   
  
This is it, you want to cry out, this is the dragon’s grave. There is unfilled holes in the palace, from your empty pockets to the lack of moving things to the rushed thuds of the soldiers behind the door. The fox had told you before that the world hates unfilled things, since the world most fears black-holes than anything else. You do not know what a black hole is, but you can imagine it.   
  
It could not be the black you’ve seen, because the dark is not nothing, and there is so much nothing that you have been making lately, and none of them come close to the dark, or the light. Your tutor says dark is the absence of light, nothing is the absence of something, and you have never heard a more ludicrous lie as that.   
  
Your mama stands from her chair, and baba is suddenly next to her. His eyes flash, like a horde of locusts, and your mother’s eyes look like what the beginning of a scythe could be.  They look like you, but as if you have been seamed away. Mama wanted to be a queen when she was younger, but then she met baba and wanted to be a mother, she said. Baba always wanted the same thing; to fit into mama snugly, so they could become a completed puzzle.   
  
There are yells in the distance, and the red dragon on the page of your book looks about to fly, despite the ten swords pinning it to the ground.  _It’s ending, it’s starting._  


“My lady Halla! My lord Jabir! Hurry quickly! Invaders have been spotted within the palace walls!”   
  
The yells in the distance turns into one, and the yell turns into a long shriek of laughter, and it sounds of a fire burning down the cannons in a battlefield.

* * *

**7.**  “That won’t do, not for this particular game.” The foxes tail swishes, and the fox taps it claws against its mouth again.   
  
Suddenly, there is no black, but instead, you are in the middle of the sky, right next to the moon and the billions of stars that seems only you and the fox can see.

“Pharmaka.” The fox says, and the moon grows brighter, and you cannot hear anything but how she glows.   
  
Pharmaka, pharmaka, the thing before the beginning, the thing after the end. The moment of the second-hand of the clock when it moves to the next second, the movement of the dark when you close your eyes. A monster, one that has it’s sins looking beautiful under the night, and the moon makes their horridness turn to  something resembling lust, of chastity; the evilest kind of purity. A dreamer with too many elbows and too many knees and not enough teeth, something that has four eyes instead of two, to help you figure out real and fake better.   
  
Pharmaka,  _pharmaka_ , the moon sings. A lover with pomegranates as lips and dressed in shame and hope instead of dresses.

A pharmaka is a monster, a lover, a dreamer, a witch, you think. Your mother is one as well, but she cannot notice. Her magic resides in her anger, and she has forgotten how to crack it open. Your father could almost be one, but not quite, he’s just a magician instead. A magician is one who can tip the scales how they so wish, a pharmaka is the scale.   
  
“The moon loves you.” The fox answers, gleeful and elusive.   
  
_Curious,_  you ask.

“You’ve got star pieces in you, clearly. Your mother and father made it so.” The fox replies, and the moon sings  _pharmaka, pharmaka_ again.

* * *

**14.**  “What other places are there? I wanna hear about all of them, so I can tell when you finally let me travel with you and baba.”   
  
Mama hums, playfully. “Oh my, there’s ever so many! I could tell you about Nevivon, or Prakra, or Drakr, or even the southern tribes…”   
  
“Tell me about the southern tribes!” You whine, already impatient.   
  
“They are people who worship demons,” She answers, story voice low and chilling, for extra effect. “They live in small huts, and follow no one but their leader, and rumor has it they eat themselves when the winter grows too cold. They care for nothing but war and death, because the demons are always, always hungry for humans.”  
  
You shiver, and think about the heart-eating man.   
  
Mama continues. “They only are satisfied when they themselves are finally dead, and that is why you can never deal with any of them. Barbarians, awful.”   
  
“I don’t like that story very much,” You titter, and sit, staring at your hands.   
  
She laughs in response, and leans down from her desk to pinch your cheek. “Don’t worry, my darling. They live far, far away, and they don’t like the water. You’re safe here.”

* * *

 

 **3.**  The day makes you so tired, you feel as if you should be sleeping through the day instead of through the night. There are too many people who hurry past you, and there’s not enough of stars to see in the sky.    
  
You go to bed early, kissing your parents cheeks goodnight, and ignore their worried glances between each other.   
  
The sun does not like you, you suppose. The moon feels so much better against your forehead than the morning does. It almost feels like mama, but not quite.

You have your own room, full of the rocks you find in the mazes and in the garden courtyards and in the moats when no one catches you swimming in them. The telescope on the edge of your room sits cheerfully, and the dreamcatchers over your bed twinkle as pretty as wood-chimes. You take off your day gown, the pink silk soft but warm, and slip into much cooler, softer pajamas.   
  
The bed is more comforting than you expected, and you fall asleep in less than a minute.

 

* * *

 

 **6.**  The magician stops laughing suddenly, but it still grins. “Asra,” It says. “You know what you are, correct?”   
  
_Curious_ , you answer.  
  
The grin thins, but it grows sharper still. “Ah.” It replies.

 

* * *

 

 **10.**  There’s that point in time where you have to return to it. Whatever you just saw, it doesn’t matter, because you’re only human, and every human is doomed to fall into it’s routine of falling under time. However high you fly, you will still fall.   
  
Someone is screaming, shrill and loud. The bed seems to be suffocating you, and all the glass in your room shatters. The door bursts open, with the soldier in front of your door rushing to your prone figure, and yells at the second one to call someone, _fucking do it!  He’s going batshit!_ The glass rises from the floor and shatters further, and further, and further, until it turns to sand once more, and it sticks to your throat, and oh, it doesn’t hurt as much as your body thinks it does.   
  
There’s an image over the horizon. A sunrise, but not. A waterfall, but now. A locust swarm, but with gladiator beetles colored war-red. A lump swallowing ten swords, and colorless eyes, one’s that look like they’re carved from war themselves. There’s feelings here too. You can’t breathe, but you still feel them nonetheless. There’s things you can’t name, but they hurt so badly that the scream in the room grows louder and it’s all a swirling mess of tears and red, there’s too much red, the beetles stick to the sand in your throat the you can’t move, not really. There’s a gray lump of sickness in the edge of the sunrise, and it makes your skin fever and stomach hurdle and you feel sick at the sight of it. There’s a man there too, you can’t see his features but he’s swallowing heart after heart, and you press your hand over your own heart and oh, you can’t feel it beating.   
  
On and on it goes, with so much swelling under your tendons that your head explodes three times and four times.   
  
It stops as soon as someone pours water over you. Your eyes slam open, and you breathe as if you never had. It’s baba, holding a bucket, scared and crying. Mama stands next to him, stone-still with only two tears down her cheeks. She’s without her hijab, and waves of white curly hair frizzes the two of them; a cloud of comfort.   
  
You’re so thankful you cry. “Baba, Mama” You whisper. It’s the first you’ve ever spoken using words. You don’t want them to see the heart-eating man. “There’s so much red in the skies, and I don’t like what is signifies. I hate it.”   
  
Baba gives a groan and falls to your figure, holding you, shaking.   
  
Mama closes her black eyes. “Habibi,” She whispers, voice hoarse and horrible, “You never get nightmares.”

 

* * *

 

 **15**.Baba comes into the common room, face shining and triumphant. “I’ve got it! It’s finally fucking done!”   
  
“Language, Jabir.” Mama scolds.  
  
Baba sticks out his tongue, and holds out a package wrapped in brown paper. “I’ve been dealing with this magic bullshit for hours, Halla, I think I deserve a break.” 

 

* * *

 

 

 **8.**  You aren’t eight years old anymore. Here, you’re just born. Here, you’re older than the universe. Your tongue stretches one hundred miles. Your finger pricks at a star, and draws blood.

 

* * *

 

 

 **12.**  The fox keeps grinning, even when you sleep with your parents, wedged between them. “Asra,” It whispers in your ear. “Soon, you’re going to have to travel again.”   
  
The nights are long when it happens. You never mention it. You play with wooden swords with the captain of the guard instead, when it’s morning, and you think that the captain might understand.

 

* * *

 

 

 **11.** You sleep with them the next few days, and you can hear their relief shedding the skins of fear. Finally, you talk with words. Finally, the servants don’t run from your gaze as fast. Finally, you don’t break glass when you’re upset.

This new predicament is a double-edged sword, however. You can talk, but it’s always questions, and there is nothing the royal court hates more than answering the questions of an outsider. You can talk, but the color red never leaves your mouth.    
  
Mama remodeled the rooms so there’s not a single shade of red anywhere to be seen. Instead, it’s all blues and greens and golds, which is fine by you. It matches the auras of your mother and father, their blue and green mixing together like robin eggs. Your own aura isn’t blue, or green. Instead, yours is blue, and purple, and pink, and orange, and white, all molding and shining together, like the sunset. It’s pretty, but you don’t know what it means.   
  
You keep shut about important things. You act more like a kid, and it’s as if a hidden part of you comes out. You climb trees, and it’s fun to fall down from them. You dig holes under the rose-bushes, and you find fat worms, which you use to fish with in the moats.  You hug mama and baba and uncle Rashaad, and you giggle when his beard tickles. You laugh when the servants trip over the line you set up, and people begin to complain not of your magic, but of your pranks.   
  
A soldier falls asleep and you paint on his armour and smiley face that looks like him, and he howls in indignation and his friends point it out to him, smiling.  
  
It’s good. It’s normal. You feel eight years old again, and you try to build a fort in the laundry rooms, until the washer kicks you out. “That boy needs some company!” They yell, and you giggle in agreement.

 

 

* * *

**16**. “Oh!” Mama gasps, and one prim hand flutters to her chest, and her smile starts to match his. “Is it truly complete? After all these months of work…?”  
  
Baba starts to laugh, breathy and lyrical. You continue cutting the circles you’re making, because sometimes mama and baba have these moments that mama only uses her and her ‘jabir’ heart for, and that’s ok.   
  
It seems to be just the two of them, jumping in their joy and victory, talking about things like ‘the court bard helped me with the lyrics’ and ‘you won’t believe how many seas i had to travel to get to Mazelinka’ and ‘Rashaad will give us a few days in the summer palace for this, i’m sure’.   
  
It’s a moment between the two of them, and you stick out your tongue to help you with the cutting, and it’s fine until baba walks over to you and sits down, next to the pile of completed purple circles.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **9.**  “Let’s try again,” The fox says, and all at once, the sky turns into beetles, and everything  grows large, and the moon is gone, and the rabbits die, one by one.

* * *

 

 

 **20**. You run. You fly. You weep, and you watch as your home, the palace burns under your ankles. The book is clutched to your chest, and you don’t look back, because something tells you you shouldn’t.   
  
You hear the stranger’s laugh, You run until you trip over cobblestone steps, and you tumble down the stairwell, head ringing and nose trickling blood.   
  
It’s a cold night, and you don’t pick yourself up. A door swings open, and someone calls out in surprise. You don’t hear what they say. They try to touch you, and you scramble out, turn invisible again, and run.   
  
Pharmaka, pharmaka, the moon sings, mourning. The second-hand of the clock has landed in it’s destination, and the start has already ended. You run until you see a crowd, with more people running to and fro than you’ve ever seen, exclaims of _The king is dead! The king is dead! Vesuvia has fallen_! Singeing in the air. Pharmaka, pharmaka, you’re so tired, you’re still sobbing, your ribs and head still hurts.  You sit down, in the middle of this busy street, and howl as much as the rabbits do, as much as the pigs as well,  and it’s an awful thing to know that you’re only here because the moon loves you.   
  
People step over you. Babies cry. It seems like hours and no one stops to touch you. Good, you think. My parents are gone, I am no one, I do not exist.   
  
You get up wearily, and hold the book, hear your heart thumping. You walk, and you’re lost, but you keep walking. You don’t know Vesuvia. You’ve only travelled to the fancy parts, and this place smells of salt and sickness and sadness. You walk until you reach the harbor, and you sit, and you sleep.   
  
Tomorrow, the stranger will stand on the downtown pedestal, and you will see his face, since you stand in front of the crowd. He has one arm, and silver eyes, and blonde hair, and coal around his face, and he will never be satisfied with eating until he himself is eaten.  
  
_“Hello, people of Vesuvia! My name is Lucio, and I am your new Count. Kneel.”_  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> leave me some love down the comments below, or on my tumblr asramen, for the sake of my poor hands and my lost sanity! thank ya!


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